If Mom is happy, so is baby, and if a happy baby is your goal, you definitely want to practice Prenatal Yoga.
Whether as a beginner or a seasoned veteran to yoga, Prenatal Yoga provides tools to reap yoga's benefits.
How you may ask? The new life forming within brings extra motivation to turn inward for deeper awareness of breath, alignment, and a gentler approach to your yoga practice.
The three keys of yoga's healing powers are: Breathing! Focus! Movement! Ujjayi (yogic) breathing, (created by lifting to the upper back palette), while taking diaphragm in and out breaths, creates a soft whispering sound.
This sound helps maintain a continuous awareness of breath which soothes the nervous system.
Meanwhile the 'focus' fires up the executor: the prefrontal cortex that solves problems and creates solutions.
When in this higher mind we bypass the amygdala or reactive, emotional brain which will take you into a fight and flight response.
Thus instead of anxiety/agitation/depression and all those reactive states, we find calm, responsiveness.
You are in the parasympathetic nervous system now and that allows you to rest and digest, instead of the sympathetic fight, flight and fright.
This is all about setting up a happy healthy environment for baby to flourish.
Now comes the Movement part which helps the expansion of lungs, slows the heart rate, so the adrenal glands can relax and produce less cortisol (stress hormone) which reduces crazy cravings.
Repetitive bending and continuous movement changes enhance strength flexibility and balance.
As much as giving birth is an athletic event, gentle movement coordinated with breath brings a sense of ease, vital to maintaining this healthy life affirming inner state.
This next focus of prenatal yoga is adding additional benefit to Mom and Baby, by creating a swaddling environment for this growing new life.
This swaddling effect that babies love can be created within mothers own womb.
By toning the transverse abdominis muscle, which is the deepest layer of the abdominals.
The transverse muscle wraps around the waist from spine to the navel, like a girdle.
Giving gentle strength, tone and support to the womb.
Specific exercises targeting the abdominis muscles in conjunction with breath, while strengthening and toning, create pressure to allow for better absorption of nutrients.
It also keeps that swaddling effect for extra support.
Adding gentle stretches, to tone and stretch pelvic floor muscles while abdominal toning adds strength for the birthing process and a faster recuperation.
Without engagement of these muscles the belly tends to ride low, sag and create a heavy, weighted feel.
Inwardly you can only imagine how the baby feels suspended in precarious space, rather than feeling held and supported.
With a strong abdominis muscle, the belly stays lifted high, and remains in the basket of Mom's basketball shaped belly.
Let's not forget there are still more advantages to yoga that highlight the prenatal benefits.
The expansion of lungs slows the heart rate; the adrenal glands relax and produce less cortisol (stress hormone) reducing crazy cravings.
Repetitive bending and continuous movement changes enhance strength flexibility and balance.
Healthy happy Mom and baby, with a quick recuperation are now ready for the joy of delivery, birth and new life together.